“Are you on drugs?”
I looked over at Greg, who was as flabbergasted as I was. Mojo didn’t fail. This was entirely unexpected. Surprise didn’t help me process or communicate. “Huh?”
“You are on drugs. Great, just great. Not only do I have a PI sticking his nose in my case, I have a stoner PI sticking his nose in my case. Get up. You two are coming with me.”
I looked at her again, and got serious with the mojo, really tried to supplant her will with mine. “No, we’re not. You will leave here and forget you ever saw us. You came in, Joe Arthur was passed out drunk, he has nothing to do with these disappearances and you left. That is all.”
She looked back at me just as hard and said “You are a pain in my butt, and you are going to jail for interfering with my investigation.”
Since my vampire willpower wasn’t working, Greg stepped in for the save. “Sorry to disappoint, but we’re not going anywhere with you. I’m sorry we’ve run into this misunderstanding, but it’s not going to happen. Now why don’t you get in your car, go back to the station, and forget you ever ran into us this evening.”
Greg’s best mojo netted equally disappointing results and a disgusted headshake from the officer. Both of us were seeing this cop in a whole new light. I’d never run into anyone who could shrug off multiple vamp mojo attempts, but this chick evidently had a will of cast iron.
She reached around to her belt and grabbed a radio, clicking it on as she brought it to her lips. “This is Detective Law. I need a wagon at Lucky Strike for two passengers.” She put the radio back on her belt and looked at us. “You two are going to spend the night in a holding cell while I figure out exactly what I’m going to charge you with. Unless you have a really good story and start sharing it with me right now.”
“Um… we were hired by the family of one of the kidnapped girls?” I offered up.
“The Reynolds family?” she asked.
I nodded.
“No, you weren’t. They called me as soon as you left there. I left instructions with every family to call me as soon as the vultures, and that means you, started coming around, so that I could run you off. So you came around, they called, and voilà! Here I am, running you off.”
“But… but…,” I spluttered. I’m not proud of it, but splutter was the best I could come up with.
“But how did I find you? Mrs. Arthur also called me, and told me that you had just left her house, and were probably headed here to harass her husband publicly. Looks like she has some shred of marital loyalty left. And here we are.”
“And here we are,” I muttered. Here I was in the middle of a brightly lit public space with a human that I couldn’t put the whammy on.
This was so far outside the norm, I was totally stumped. Greg and I had been bespelling humans for fun and foodstuffs for the better part of two decades, and nothing like this had ever happened before. Primitive survival instincts kicked in. We shared a look that said, “You wanna hit her or you want me to?” and I had just decided to deck the pretty detective in front of about seventy witnesses when her cell phone rang.
She pulled out her phone and pressed a button. “Law”
Thanks to our super-duper hearing, Greg and I had the benefit of following both sides of the conversation.
A disembodied voice said, “Detective, we have another abduction. Marjorie Ryan was last seen leaving a school dance with three of her friends forty-five minutes ago. Her friends all arrived home, but Marjorie did not. We’ve established a perimeter between the school and the home, and we have a chopper in the air. What’s your twenty?”
“Lucky Strike bowling alley. I was about to question a potential suspect. Obviously, he’s not our guy. I’m on my way, should be there in fifteen.”
I held up my hands and started to back away, saying, “You’ve obviously got a lot going on, so we’ll get out of your way. Good luck catching the bad guys!”
“Don’t even think about moving. As a matter of fact, you two are still going downtown, if for nothing else than to keep you out of my hair. No way do I need you mucking around my crime scene and getting in my way. Gimme your right hands.” She reached behind her and grabbed a pair of handcuffs.
I shook my head. “Look, Detective. You don’t have enough to charge us with anything, and handcuffing us and leaving us here is a bad idea no matter whose police procedure manual you cite.” I thought if mojo wasn’t working then maybe I could appeal to her sense of reason. “If you think you need to keep an eye on us, take us along. My partner and I have a lot of experience in unusual cases. We could probably be helpful if you’d just let us.”
“Okay, maybe you would be useful.” She seemed to relent, and reached out to shake my hand. Without thinking, I took her hand, and just like in a thousand bad cop movies, she slapped a cuff on it. Then she reached over to the swivel chair mounted to the scoring station and locked the other cuff around it.
“Now stay put. You,” she said to Greg, “give me your keys.”
He reached in his pocket and handed her the keys to the Pontiac. “I’m gonna get those back, right?” he asked, looking like a whipped puppy.
“Sure. You can pick them up at the station downtown tomorrow morning. I’ll be sure to have them there by nine.” With that, she turned and headed for the door. I sat down with my arm twisted uncomfortably behind me and looked over at Greg, who took the other seat.
“This would be a very good time to tell me you have a spare set of car keys,” I said, glaring at him.
“Under the back bumper, bro. No worries.”
“Good, then I won’t have to strangle you in your sleep.”
“I don’t breathe, so it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“It would make me feel better.”
“Yeah, I can see where you might be a little disgusted with yourself for falling for the old handshake/handcuff switcheroo.” He looked unbearably smug sitting there. I hate it when he’s got the right answers for things. It messes with the natural order of the universe.
“So, how you planning on getting out of there?”
I stood up and stepped around behind the chair, hiding the handcuff from the rest of the bowling alley with my body. I twisted and pulled, but couldn’t get enough leverage to get it off my arm. The cuff groaned a little. I shoved the metal band further up my forearm until it was nice and tight. I flexed one more time, but all I got for my trouble was a red mark around my arm and a couple of stares from a passing waitress.
“Did somebody forget to eat his Wheaties this morning?” Greg asked. “You should be able to snap that like a pretzel.”
“Yeah, I know, but I can’t get a good angle on the cuff. Time for Plan B.” I reached down and grabbed the back of the chair with my free hand. I worked the molded plastic for a minute, couldn’t get it to give at all, and finally just ripped the whole seat free of the swivel, which consisted of cheap metal fastenings. I stood there in the middle of the bowling alley with a chair hanging from one wrist.
“Let’s go,” I snarled at Greg, who was having trouble getting to his feet because he was laughing so hard.
I trudged to the front door, pausing long enough to tell the counter guy that the chair in lane nine was busted, and dragged the stupid chair all the way out the mall entrance to the parking lot, attracting more than one strange look on the way. I got to the car and reached under the bumper. I felt around and pulled out one of those magnetic key boxes, and slid it open, only to find a business card for Detective Sabrina Law. She had written a note on the back of the card saying, “Hide it better next time.”
Greg made it out to the parking lot in time to laugh some more at the sight of a gangly six-foot-three-inch vampire stomping around the lot cursing inventively and swinging a plastic chair around his head by a handcuff.
“Dude, hold still, let me get you out of that thing,” he said when I stopped swearing and flailing.
He reached into a pocket of his utility belt and brought out a small foldin
g saw, the kind they sell at sporting goods stores. I thought of about seventeen wisecracks, but decided I valued emancipation from the bowling alley furniture over a good zinger and held my tongue. His little saw was surprisingly effective, and in a couple of minutes, I was free.
Well, mostly free. I still had a handcuff dangling from my wrist, but there was no longer a giant hunk of molded plastic attached to it. Some nights you can only ask for so much, and this was shaping up to be one of those.
“I don’t suppose you have another set of keys in that belt, do you?” I asked hopefully.
“No, but I have the next best thing,” Greg replied.
Before I could ask what exactly that was, he reached under my arm, grabbed my Glock and walked over to where a young couple was doing what young couples do in the back lanes of parking lots. Greg tapped on the glass with the pistol, and then put his fist through the back passenger window. He pulled a skinny teenage kid out through the window, pointed the gun at his rapidly shriveling pride and joy, and hinted that the kid should run away. Then he leaned into the back window, smiled at the girl broadly enough to show a lot of fang, and laughed as she beat a hasty retreat out the other door. He tossed a T-shirt at her retreating, and naked, back, and reached into the floor of the backseat for the boy’s pants.
“Subtle. That looked like something I would do,” I said as I walked around and got into the passenger seat. Greg had retrieved the car keys from the boy’s pants by then, settled himself behind the wheel and put the car in gear.
“Sorry,” he said without an ounce of remorse. “I was under the impression that we were in a hurry. Problem solved.”
He peeled rubber out of the parking lot and handed me back my gun. I tuned the radio to an oldies station and cranked some vintage Springsteen as we headed off to the site of the latest kidnapping. I wasn’t sure what our detective friend would think about our appearing at her crime scene, but I wasn’t too inclined to care. We only had about forty-eight hours to stop the summoning of a serious metaphysical beastie from taking place, and our Big Bad was now one ankle-biter closer to its quota.
Flying under the radar of the cops was no longer an option.
Chapter Seventeen
Every cop in the greater Charlotte area was camped out in a three-block radius between the latest victim’s school and home. It would have been a great time for bank heists, jewelry store capers or just knocking over liquor stores for pocket change.
Greg and I parked the car a couple of blocks outside the ring of flashing blue lights and left the keys in the ignition. I’d rifled through the kid’s wallet on the way across town and found twenty-seven bucks and six condoms. The kid was something of an optimist. Or an overachiever.
We circled the perimeter until we found a young, scared-looking cop working a section of sidewalk alone. I walked up to him, smiling my friendliest smile, which is not much more reassuring than Hannibal Lecter after eating bad steak tartare, but I got close enough to see the color of his eyes.
“H-hold it right there,” the kid stammered and put his hand on his gun. I hoped he wouldn’t shoot himself in the foot before I mojo’d him. “You’ll have to go around, sir. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
“Me, too, Officer. Now give me your handcuff keys.” His eyes went glassy and he reached around to the back of his belt and handed me the keys. I unlocked the cuff around my wrist, relieved to find that my mojo wasn’t permanently on the fritz. It simply didn’t work on one particular badass Amazon warrior princess cop.
“Thanks, Officer,” Greg said politely. “You never saw us.”
Then we split up. Greg headed towards the kid’s home to see if he could pick up anything there because he’s more sensitive to psychic garbage than I am. Psychic anything is right in his wheelhouse.
I concentrated on what I do best—looking for things to hit and annoying pretty women. Toward that end, I headed toward the center of activity in hopes of finding Detective Law. I used her ever-so-helpful business card and my PI credentials to badge my way into the mobile command tent they had set up in the schoolyard, and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Lose these?” I dangled her handcuffs from one finger. The cops around us let out a couple of wolf whistles and I put on my best imitation of a rakish grin.
It probably worked a little, because she stepped in close to me, reclaimed her handcuffs, and whispered in my ear, “I don’t know how you got loose, or how you got here, and I don’t really care. But you’ve got about three seconds to get out of my crime scene before I shoot off something you’re probably inordinately proud of.”
I looked down and saw her Smith & Wesson pointed at Little Jimmy and stepped back quickly.
As much as I usually enjoy banter, we were on a deadline. “This is getting old. Why don’t you take me outside?” I turned around and put my hands behind my back, making it easy for her to re-cuff me. I also made sure there was no furniture nearby.
“Oh, I will. Mostly because I don’t want everybody to see me beat the crap out of you.” She put a hand on my elbow and walked me out of the tent. As soon as we were in some relative shadow, I stopped walking. She had to stop, too, because, despite my skinny frame, she couldn’t move me. She looked up, confused.
“You want to take these cuffs off me now,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” she spat.
“It wasn’t a question.”
She got right up in my face and was about to say something that probably would have accomplished absolutely nothing when I dangled her cuffs in front of her face. It was worth petty larceny to see the look on her face. She got another look entirely as I crushed the handcuffs into a mangled mess of steel and dropped them at her feet.
“Don’t bother trying that again.” I kept my voice low, and my expression calm. I needed her, and whether she knew it or not, she needed me. She started to go for her gun, but I caught her hand as she was reaching for it.
“Don’t,” I said. “You’ll never make the draw, and it wouldn’t matter if you did. You know that somewhere in the hindbrain that protects you. Now ignore all this—me, what I am—for a little while. Believe me when I say that if I’d wanted to kill you, I’d have done that already. All I want is to get this kid back home safely. You’ll find that I’m happy to take orders, but we need to work together.”
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
“You’ve already checked us out. You know we weren’t anywhere near the crime scenes. Right?”
To her credit, she didn’t try to act like she hadn’t followed up on us. “Yes. You’re apparently just what you say you are—a couple of low-rent private eyes with no priors. That doesn’t explain why I should let you in on a police investigation.”
“Looking around this joint, I’d say you’ve pulled in every resource you can lay your hands on. I’d guess that you’re about one missing kid away from calling in a pet psychic to interview the family schnauzer. Just call us consultants.”
“I know how to get you on the case, asshole. What I don’t have yet is a good reason why to put you on this case.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and I looked back at her face, disappointed.
“Because we’ve proven that you can’t get rid of us?” I asked hopefully.
“That may be true, but I don’t have to enable you. Now I’m going to go interview the parents. Stay the hell away from them, and stay the hell away from my investigation. I can’t keep you off public property, but if I catch you interfering in my investigation again, I can sure as hell put you in the county jail for obstruction of justice.”
I stepped back. She stared at me for a minute, and if looks could kill, I’d have been dead all over again.
I looked at her for a long moment and finally nodded. “You win, Detective. We’ll stay out of the way.” I turned and headed toward the school.
“Hey,” she called out after me. “Wait a minute.” She took a couple of long strides over to me and leaned in close. “I don’t know how you
did that little handcuff trick, but it’s gonna take a lot more than that to scare me. When I get done with this mess, I am going to find out what your deal is. And if I don’t like what I find, you’re going to be very unhappy for a very long time.”
I looked at her for a minute. “I’ve been unhappy for longer than you can imagine. Without an end in sight.” I turned around and walked off in the direction of the school to see what I could find about a missing little girl.
I kicked myself a little for letting her needle me into that parting shot. I’m not the brooding type, but something in her eyes made me miss being human, just for a minute. I’ve gone whole years without missing the sun, but right then the prospect of never being able to wake up next to a beautiful woman and watch the sunlight play across her back and legs was enough to make me ache.
I had been lost in my thoughts for a minute or two when I caught a strange scent on the air. I scanned the sidewalk ahead and pulled out my cell and called Greg.
“Yo. Where you at?” I asked.
“God, your grammar gets worse the longer you’re dead. I’m on the roof of the school. I found something funny up here. Where are you?”
“About to hop the playground fence over by the swings. Are you where you can see me?”
“Yeah. And fortunately for you I’m the only one who can see you. The cops assigned to the school are all out front and inside. How’d your conversation with the hot cop go?”
“About like all my other conversations with beautiful women,” I grumbled.
“That bad, huh? Well, come up here and take a look at this.”
“I’ll be up in a second.” I crossed the playground, trying to figure out what the smell was. It wasn’t quite sulfur, but it had a little of that acrid tang to it. I couldn’t place where I had smelled it before, so I took a running leap onto the roof and walked over to where Greg was kneeling in front of what looked like a protective circle.
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